Remnant: From the Ashes Review (Warriorsage)
Remnant is not only one of those games where it's difficult to find concise information on what it's actually like, but also whose reviews tend to be either written by fanboys or people who hate it because it's not actually Dark Souls.
It basically feels like a stripped down Fallout influenced by Dark Souls, mixed with a Stargate theme and some weird fantasy mechanics that are never explained. There you go.
Is it like Dark Souls? Saving you some technical explanations, it's more forgiving in terms of mechanics. Bosses are interesting, but sub-par and surrounded by "adds". I did appreciate that many of them have an alternate kill which results in a completely different item drop. They also have unskippable cutscenes, which is unforgivable in a grinding game. Regular enemies are a dime a dozen with heavy telegraphing, and the very snappy control system feels wasted on them.
The story and lore are pretty intriguing, and then suddenly it's over. They also didn't bother having an actual ending, unless you count the pseudo-ending provided by the DLC Subject 2923. Sidequests are practically non-existent. Character interactions are brief, and shallow.
Levels are randomly generated, but honestly pretty short. At any given time you can roll a world via "Adventure Mode", which cycles everything, completely outside the campaign. If you're thorough, there are very, VERY few items (I only recall one) that are missable in the campaign, but if you do, you can reroll that as well. Not every boss, character, piece of gear or event is available on every roll.
There are, technically, no character builds. Your starter gear is affected by one of three classes, but through various achievements or events in the game you acquire cards with various effects. These Traits level up to 20 a piece, and there are 50 of them, ranging from HP steal, to armor effectiveness, melee damage, some stats, all sorts of things. All of them are active at the same time from the moment you acquire them.
The gear count is 49 weapons, 18 armor sets, 74 rings (of which you can wear two at a time), and 36 amulets in the game. There are also 40 weapon mods providing your functional abilities, but not every weapon can change the slotted mod. Weapons and armor have their own levels, gained from a small set of materials you find on your travels. Weapon mods have their own stat increases based on the level of the weapon that they're on, and recharge as you do damage with them (or just naturally, via specific loadouts).
Remnant semi-fails on its RNG and replay value. While the core game is fun, and the 3-person coop has reasonable scaling, it's largely a collection game. This is because the story is so short, enemies do not scale in such a way that they require specific builds, AND loot remains the same on all difficulties except Hardcore and Survival modes. Remnant is something you "just play." This is fine for many people, but if you expect to need a variety of equipment and/or abilities to get through sections of the game, you will be utterly disappointed. "Advanced challenges" don't exist.
In Hardcore mode, you create a fresh character for a perma-death run for the campaign, in order to snag one of ten pieces of account-bound equipment or an emote. Any unlocks are saved after completion of the entire campaign, or death, for any and all characters.
In Survival mode you are stripped to your undies, taken to a room to buy some randomized starter gear, and have to beat a random world from its beginning that also has randomized gear and trait drops. When you complete it or die trying, you're chucked back out to the starter room, with any unlocks being account-bound like Hardcore mode. Five of the ten unique items dropped here can also be bought in the regular game with a special resource gained from any difficulty other than normal.
Since item drops, character appearances (such as vendors), or specific dungeons are random, the RNG can be quite horrendous in spite of the relatively small environments. I gave up on a particular armor set after thirty or forty rolls on a particular world. It doesn't help that none of it is necessary to get through the game, and some builds are dead in the water depending purely on how many times you can do things like looking for an insect in a random room, in a random dungeon that has a random chance to spawn IN A RANDOM PLACE ON THE MAP. Even with good friends, good music, possibly good booze, that kind of sh*t is just too much.
Good game, get it on sale, yes you want the DLC, just don't expect to blow hundreds of hours on it.